How to Create a Credit System in AccessAlly Using Custom Fields

AccessAlly’s Custom Field Operations can be used to create a “credit system” for your membership site, where logged in members can earn (and spend!) points. It’s a great way to keep your members engaged and excited about your membership site or online course area.

This functionality is often used to create a credit system or reward points tally. You can also set up Custom Field Operations to trigger automations inside your CRM.

Step 1: Set up Set Up Credit System With AccessAlly Custom Field Operations (To Add and Subtract To Your Credit System)

In this tutorial you’ll see how you can add and subtract from a custom field, to create any type of credit or point system you can imagine.

We recommend writing down the points system that you envision, and sharing it with your members. Whether that’s awarding points when someone completes a quiz, getting a monthly set of points for being a member in good standing, earning points for sharing on social media, or anything else you can imagine.

Step 2: Create Custom Fields To Track “Points” in Your CRM System

The next step is to set up a corresponding custom field inside your CRM system. AccessAlly will use this custom field to serve as the user’s “bank account” to maintain a balance of credit. This is a necessary step if you want to use AccessAlly’s Credit System for your logged in members.

Infusionsoft

Ontraport

ActiveCampaign

ConvertKit

Drip

If you are using Infusionsoft or Ontraport, you’ll need to create a Custom Field that is an Integer. That means it can store numbers, instead of text.

Step 3: How to Earn & Spend Credits Inside Your Membership Site

After setting up your credit system inside AccessAlly and your CRM, it’s time to decide how you want your users to be able to earn & spend the credits.

Earning Credits

Release X credits each month for active membership subscribers

Scenario: Every time a member’s monthly payment is successfully charged, they receive 100 (or any number) credits.

The custom operation setup:

The CRM setup:

If you already have an automation that runs every time the monthly payment is charged successfully, you can simply add the webhook / HTTP post from the custom operation to that CRM automation. (Note: every time a payment is charged successfully, AccessAlly will add a “payment success” tag. This tag is set up in your AccessAlly products area and can be used to trigger a monthly automation.)

When the webhook is run in the automation, the user will automatically be given the appropriate number of credits.

Scenario: You would like to allow users to use credits to “buy” access to additional site content.

For this, you’ll set up a custom operation to decrease a field value. In this custom operation, you can:
– Configure the new course permission tag (or a tag that immediately triggers a release automation) to be added when the operation is run.
– Redirect the user to the new course URL
– Enable the operation to be triggered from inside your membership site. (A shortcode will appear when this option is checked. When the shortcode is added to a page, a button will appear. When a user clicks the button, the entire operation will run (the permission tag will be added and X credits will be deducted from their account). ADVANCED: if you would like to “hide” the button so that users with access can’t click it and accidentally lose credits, you can surround it with conditional content shortcodes.

Will your users simply be able to click a button inside the membership site to earn (or spend) points? Maybe they’ll earn points each time they login to the site. Or will it happen automatically from a CRM automation when they complete a certain action (or receive a tag)?

Please see the following tutorials to set up the type of trigger you want to use:

Step 4: Display The Credit Amount For Each User

If you’d like your membership site users to see the “balance” of their credit, you can do so with the appropriate AccessAlly shortcode.

First, using the AccessAlly shortcode adder, select the “Custom Field Value for Operation” shortcode from the dropdown:

Then, since each custom operation is set up differently, you’ll want to select the corresponding custom operation from the dropdown. (Any custom operation that’s been set up to work with the credit system custom field in your CRM can be chosen.)

Once added to the page, this shortcode will show the amount of credit the user has to spend.

Step 5: How to View Credit System Purchase Logs

Under AccessAlly Custom Operations > Logs, you can see when and how each user has spent (or earned) credits inside your membership site.